The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare Read Free Book Online

Princess’ Theatre was played without scene breaks, with few textual cuts, and featured the brothers Charles and Harry Webb as near-identical Dromios.
    The first production at the Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon was in 1882, directed by Edward Compton, who played Dromio of Ephesus. There was another London production in 1883, but in 1895 William Poel returned the play to Gray’s Inn for his production with the Elizabethan Stage Society, whose aim was to recreate original stage practices as far as possible. F. R. Benson staged the play in 1905 at the Coronet Theatre, playing Antipholus of Syracuse, although critics were still disapproving of the play itself. 22

    1. From 1864, Princess’ Theatre, with Charles and Harry Webb as “near identical Dromios.”
    There were two further productions at the Old Vic: in 1915, in which Sybil Thorndike played Adriana, and in 1927, in which the twins wore false noses, two turned up and two turned down. In the open-air performance in Regent’s Park in 1934 the play formed half of a double bill with
Comus
, Milton’s masque in honor of chastity. Ben Greet co-directed a production at London’s Terry’s Theatre in 1899, playing Dromio of Ephesus, a role he reprised in the 1916 revival at Stratford. In 1905 Benson had played Antipholus of Syracuse there and in 1914 Patrick Kirwan had played Dromio of Syracuse.
    The most exciting, successful, and influential production in the first half of the twentieth century was Theodore Komisarjevsky’s anarchic, inventive staging, filled once again with music, dancing, and commedia dell’arte clowning, at Stratford in 1938. The Mediterranean-style, romantic set of pastel-colored houses was dominated by a clock tower on the back wall in which the clock struck the hour and the hands whizzed round to catch up, demonstrating the passage of time and adding urgency to Egeon’s plight. The production was a great box-office success while critics, still dismissive of the play’s claims to serious consideration, found it successful and entertaining: “On that barren and tedious farce it superimposes the wittiest and gayest extravaganzas.” 23
    In the same year Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart successfully adapted the play to produce the American musical comedy
The Boys from Syracuse
, which was filmed two years later. Yet another adaptation,
A New Comedy of Errors, or Too Many Twins
at the Mercury Theatre in 1940, amalgamated the work of Plautus, Shakespeare, and Molière. The play has seemed almost infinitely flexible: a Victorian musical comedy in Cambridge in 1951, the following year set in the Near East in Edwardian dress with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan in productions in Canterbury and London. It was teamed in an unlikely double bill with Shakespeare’s bloodiest revenge tragedy,
Titus Andronicus
, in Walter Hudd’s 1957 production at the Old Vic, in which Robert Helpmann’s brilliantly timed slapstick as Doctor Pinch was the highlight of the show.

    2. In 1938, Theodore Komisarjevsky’s “anarchic, inventive” production at Stratford was filled “with music, dancing and
commedia dell’arte
clowning.”
    The outstanding production of the late twentieth century was Clifford Williams’ 1962 staging at Stratford. The play’s critical reputation was enhanced by serious academic study and its place in the repertoire seemed assured after Williams’ groundbreaking production. Many of the most notable productions since have come from the RSC, discussed in detail below.
    The play’s farcical elements lend it particularly well to commedia dell’arte treatment, with its stereotyped characters and broad physical humor. One technique tried on a number of occasions has been the playing of both twins by the same actor. While ideally suited to film, it often disappoints in the theater as the recognition scenes reuniting the family prove anticlimactic. Douglas Seale introduced this innovation to qualified approval in 1963 at the American